Re: COVID-19 testing

[fischersfritz]

When I commented earlier on my surety, I took Danny's uncertainty to be
about whether the software and the software substitutes are in the area
of fascism because of the unethical licensing and the consequent
likelihood that the software is malware.

Jean Louis has confirmed that he is sure of his statement about
fascism. He has also elaborated on many policies related to SARS-CoV-2
and explained that he is sure those are fascist.

I thus wish to confirm that I am considering only the aspects
of SARS-CoV-2 policies and implementation related to software,
since I consider the other issues to be out of scope for the present
mailing list. For purposes of present discussion, I am accepting
COVID-19 testing as a reasonable request in the context of interest,
and I am considering only whether the de facto requirement
to be used by malware is fascist.

Jean writes:
> 1. (2) fascism -- (a political theory advocating an authoritarian
> hierarchical government (as opposed to democracy or liberalism))

Earlier I commented that I am sure the effective smartphone dependency
has certain aspects that I think to be part of fascism, but I wasn't
familiar enough with fascism to classify it as fascism. Using the
definition that Jean presented, I can now classify this de facto
requirement as surely fascist. The components are satisfied as follows.

* The political theory is that government services should be outsourced
  to companies who may decide whether and how to provide those services
  to the people.
* The new government is the company, which is hierarchical as opposed
  to democratic or liberal.
* The company is authoritarian because if its power in establishing the
  rights and responsibilities of the involved parties. It decides that
  services will be allowed only under a contract that it furnishes and
  that the services will in fact be dis-services that run proprietary
  software. The normalization of such contracts with non-governmental
  governments reduces their accountability. The software licensing
  further reduces accountability: Because the software is proprietary,
  it is impractical for the people (and the democratic government)
  to understand what it does, and people (and the democratic government)
  are prohibited from removing malware from the software.

Thus we have fascism as defined by whatever dictionary Jean used.

Danny, I remain curious about your unsurety about fascism and your
thoughts on monopoly. Do you know why you were unsure about the
situation being fascism? Also, what is your thought on the distinction
between fascism and monopoly as a description of the situation
of interest?

Cordially,
Fischers Fritz